Amid the harsh reality of football, final is one for the dreamers

Friday 22 February 2013 09:04 BST

There are various ways of greeting the “big game” and not all of them come with tunes of glory. What we have is maybe a remnant of another football age, a curiosity or, who knows, partly a prayer that in the ­modern game there is still a little room for the wildest of dreams.

So far, though, there has been a degree of tokenism in the praise of the journey of Phil Parkinson and his Bradford City to Sunday’s League Cup Final duel with Swansea City at Wembley. If Bradford have been heroic and Swansea impressively skilled, recognition of their deeds has, inevitably, been more than balanced by reproach for the inadequacies of such victims as Arsenal, Aston Villa and Chelsea.

What, it has not been unreasonable to ask, has happened to the pride and competitive standards of some of those celebrity players for whom Bradford’s prize for winning the final — £100,000 — would represent something sharply less than a week’s wage?

This, though, is maybe not the time for such bleak speculation or to revisit that grimly prophetic declaration of the now embattled Arsene Wenger that winning a trophy — he was speaking of the FA Cup but it applies equally to the League version which has brought him such deep humiliation in recent years — had long since ceased to compare with the importance of finishing fourth in the Premier League. He was right, of course, in terms of the financial strategy of big-time football but you do not have to go into a pub or a greasy spoon in Bradford or Swansea to hear another side of the story.

The side, this is, which will unfold so gloriously on Sunday afternoon, the one which says that football without a dream or two, without the light which bathes a winning achievement rather than a business initiative, is something which ultimately might not be quite worth the trouble.

No one has put the meaning of Sunday more adroitly than the hugely impressive manager of Swansea, Michael Laudrup. For his ambitious and, relatively speaking, notably well-heeled team, it is a small fairy-tale. For his opponents, it is one of giant proportions. It is one which elevates every corner of their existence.

More than anything, it is the raising of hope in a place which has not been encouraged to believe in the best of outcomes. Mark Lawn, the co-chairman of Bradford who with Julian Rhodes has kept the club alive through three relegations and two administrations and the accumulated losses which at the last published accounting were £4million, speaks with a degree of pride that runs, authentically you have to believe, beyond the touchlines of any sports field.

He says: “This lets lots of people who are down in the dumps with the recession see that underdogs can come through and dreams can happen.”

His manager Phil Parkinson, who briefly knew a surge of upward mobility when he moved from impressive work at Colchester to the bigger potential of Hull City, also speaks of that rush of the blood which comes when you know that you have touched the pulse of a large and proud city which has had so many hard questions to ask about its future.

Parkinson says: “I do believe that for Bradford this is massive. I really believe it can galvanise the whole area. The supporters, like so many people in the city, have come through hard times. Over the last 10 years there hasn’t been a whole lot to shout about it.”

The noise was tumultuous when James Hanson, who was, so famously now, a supermarket shelf stacker when also knocking in 46 hard-headed goals for Guiseley over two seasons in division two of Conference North, sent in the header that carried his team to Wembley.

When Hanson stood there at Villa Park, shaking his head and saying softly that reality was taking a little time to sink in, you couldn’t help but remember the scathing remarks of the ferociously competitive old pro John Giles when Sutton United imposed a bloody nose on Coventry City in the FA Cup.

It was 1989, two years after Coventry had upset Spurs at Wembley, and it was one of the last great Cup ­convulsions. He snarled: “It makes me sick when everybody goes overboard in praise of underdogs. What does the term mean? Well, an underdog is someone who either hasn’t got the talent or the application to be a top dog — and, of course, there will always be a freak result or two.”

Bradford City have produced quite a number of these. They have displayed an application and a spirit which has taken their club and their people to unexpected heights and never has there been more reason to cherish such achievement. The admirable Laudrup was right. The Bradford story, however it turns out, is very big indeed.

Changes show England power

There is nothing sacred in the claim that you should never change a winning team. It is also true that if anyone has earned the right to tinker with his selection it is surely England coach Stuart Lancaster after the impressive triumph of character in Dublin.

The formidably athletic Courtney Lawes replaces a flu‑affected James Haskell and Dylan Hartley and Manu Tuilagi are reinstated in place of Tom Youngs and Billy Twelvetrees and none of this suggests the slightest dwindling of strength.

England have indeed remade themselves since Lancaster’s appointment barely a year ago.

It is a remarkable achievement, one which is likely to be further defined by new reasons for commitment against the French at Twickenham tomorrow.

The old England — that of the dwarf-throwing night — were riddled with complacency. The new one appear to be having the danger cut off at source.

Barca not up to Real greats

It may well be that Barcelona will find a way out of the hole that was dug for them by a brilliant AC Milan performance in San Siro this week.

In the meantime, though, there is ever more reason to be sceptical about the runaway idea that they are arguably the best club team of all time. Marvellously fluent, technically stunning, adorned by the great Messi, of course, but a team more cutting, more relentless than we have seen before?

Derailed by Jose Mourinho’s parking of his Inter Milan bus in 2010, frustrated by Roberto di Matteo’s Chelsea last spring, and freakishly surviving that 2009 semi-final at Stamford Bridge, they have not yet touched the authority and bite of the Real Madrid who won the first five European Cups.

In Milan this week coach Massimiliano Allegri produced a superb gameplan and provoked a wonderful response from his team in the shutting down of Barca. But would the Real of Di Stefano, Puskas and Gento, just to mention one historic rival, have been so comfortably subdued? It is extremely hard to think so.